Black Mirror Recap: Shoot for the Moon

At around 42 minutes, “Mazey Day” is by far the shortest episode of this season of Black Mirror. And while it’s not exactly great, sometimes a brisk pace and some cheesy twists are enough to have a little fun with something, especially after an overlong slog of an episode.

In the last few years, we’ve seen quite a few films and TV series meant to reassess how the paparazzi machine treated female celebrities in the early 2000s, particularly stars like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton. So while much has been written about the topic, it’s a natural subject for a Black Mirror period piece to tackle, given the series’ interest in the failings of the media.

The episode immediately situates us in 2006 with a series of signifiers: first with the radio announcing the birth of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s daughter Suri, then with iPod Shuffles and news broadcasts about the Iraq War. Our window into this recent past is Bo (Zazie Beetz), a paparazzo who works with a “snitch” named J.P. to track down celebrities to photograph, especially in compromising positions. In the first scene, she takes photos of a closeted actor named Justin Canley stepping out of a motel room with a man; he offers her $500 for the photos, but she drives away, getting $300 apiece for them.

This is how Bo pays her bills — but she’s clearly conflicted about it, especially after she learns that Canley committed suicide after being outed to the world. As much as her paparazzo friend Hec (Danny Ramirez) reminds her it isn’t her fault, she knows that, on some level, it is. And her discomfort with her profession becomes even more pronounced when she observes how her other paparazzi “friends” treat a Britney-esque celebrity named Sydney Alberti. Not only does the scummy Whitty provoke Sydney by calling her a skank, but he accuses her of assaulting him after she responds the way any overworked, over-scrutinized young woman would.

While we’re taking in Bo’s world, we also spend some time with the titular character, who’s on the opposite side of the symbiotic (or parasitic) paparazzi-celebrity relationship. One night, after a long day filming the third installment in the popular EverWish saga in the Czech Republic, Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard) unwinds with a few glasses of wine and some shrooms. After cutting her finger on a broken glass, she goes for a drive to replenish her cigarettes. But while zoning out after staring at her psychedelically pulsating finger, she hits someone with her car — and presumably after checking the body, she drives away.

Sometime after heading to set the next day, Mazey takes off back to California to hole up somewhere and get clean. Two weeks later, Hec visits Bo at her new coffee shop job, tempting her with the promise of $30,000 for the first new photo of Mazey (or $40,000 if she “looks like a junkie”). But Bo’s contact J.P. doesn’t have any information, so she has to do the detective work herself. She looks for clues at the noodle shop Mazey mentioned regularly visiting, where she meets a delivery girl who recently spotted Mazey at some producer’s house.

Bo stakes out the house while Mazey lies inside, flashing back to the car accident nonstop. The next morning, the place is wrecked, and Mazey is visited by Dr. Babich, a holistic doctor for the stars. He gives her the usual lecture: She needs to be humble and recognize that she’s not in control of her addiction. He recommends an isolated spot out of town where she can spend a few days getting clean. When she agrees, Bo follows them in her car — but someone from Mazey’s security team tricks Bo into stopping at a nearby diner so that he can puncture her tires. From there, the trail goes cold.

But only for a few minutes, because at the diner, a waiter tells her about Cedar Wood Retreat, a rehab for rich hippie types. As it so happens, the entire complex is rented out for the weekend, housing only one patient. Pretty sure that Mazey must be that patient, Bo calls up Hec to check the place out. Unfortunately, they’re joined by Whitty and Duke, who put a tracker on Hec’s bike.

When the four paparazzi sneak into the compound, they stumble upon a horrifying sight: Mazey is chained to a bed, guarded by Babich and the same man who fucked up Bo’s tires. It feels like some satirical, over-the-top version of the shady New Age-y facilities some real celebrities use to get clean in private, and it fits with the episode’s message about the exploitation of young female celebrities. Even if these men didn’t kidnap Mazey and force her to get clean — even if she does somehow consent to this particularly intense cold-turkey treatment — it’s an undeniably fucked-up situation. Everything that this episode is trying to say is right there in the shot of Bo panicking and breaking the locks while the other three men keep snapping photos, so many and so quickly that their cameras look like strobe lights.

Up to this point, “Mazey Day” was a solid episode, albeit with slightly underdeveloped characters. But then the clouds part to reveal the full moon, and we get the biggest twist of season six: Mazey is a werewolf.

Reader, I guffawed. It’s not that the reveal goes completely unexplained; it’s easy to figure out that the man Mazey hit with her car was actually a werewolf, who bit (or scratched) her and made her this way. But when all is said and done and you look at this story broadly, it really doesn’t make much sense, either narratively or thematically. Sure, there’s the idea that the media literally turns celebrities into animals, but how does Mazey’s werewolf identity intersect with her identity as an addict? Does she genuinely need to get clean, or was all of that a red herring to cover up the true reason she’s at this retreat? Does Dr. Babich routinely deal with werewolves? Are movie stars more predisposed to lycanthropy? So much is left in the dark to preserve the twist, but I might prefer a version of this that actually engages with the concept more directly.

Instead, most of the final 15 minutes are all-out supernatural horror, with Mazey in wolf form chasing the paparazzi down. Fittingly, she takes down Whitty first after he’s too focused on taking photos to keep himself safe. Then she kills Duke, dragging his body out from beneath the fence. The final showdown happens at the diner from earlier, where she bursts in and massacres everyone there except a hiding Bo (and the waiter, who accidentally gets shot by the cop). Mazey attacks just as Bo gets her hands on the fallen gun, shooting her at the last possible moment.

In his dying moments, Hec hands the camera off to Bo, and Mazey transforms back into a human, dying there slowly in a pool of her own blood. She requests Bo kill her, but instead, Bo lets her have the gun, raising her camera to capture this young woman in the act of suicide (and perhaps afterward). It’s a predictable but satisfying ending, returning to the core theme of the episode after that detour into monster-movie territory.

In general, this season of Black Mirror has strayed from its sci-fi roots, with multiple episodes set either in the present or the past. But in addition to being a period piece, “Mazey Day” is Black Mirror’s first real attempt at introducing the supernatural. (I wouldn’t count the roaches from “Men Against Fire.”) While I wouldn’t feel confident calling it one of the stronger entries of the show, or even this season, it has its B-movie charms, especially if you’re able to get over how nonsensical the twist is and just enjoy the episode for what it is. I still want better from this show, but I’d take “stupid but mildly fun” over “long and deeply boring” any day.

Easter Eggs

• Justin Canley starred in Sea of Tranquility, the Streamberry series from “Joan Is Awful” that Eric said sucked.

• I’m not sure what the purpose of Bo’s overly timid roommate Nathan is besides illustrating the difference in Bo’s lifestyle when she has pap money (buying an iPod Shuffle) and when she’s out of the game (can’t pay rent).

• The image of a cop ignoring a Black woman’s pleas and pinning her to the floor tends to be very loaded, but it doesn’t seem like Brooker is actually trying to say anything here, and it would be a weird time for a thematic pivot. Clay has no real reason to accept what Bo is saying without question, and she does try to grab his gun, so I can’t really hate the guy.